What's better for losing weight: sustained, low intensity workouts or shorter workouts at a higher intensity? When you're wanting to lose fat, and focusing on the health of your entire body, which is the better approach? Obviously any type of exercise will help you burn fat and lose weight. But you may be impatient, or you just don't have a lot of time to set aside for working out each day. So let's talk about what are the best cardio fat burning workouts.
We've learned that during sustained exercises, after pushing yourself for a while, the body begins to burn glycogen. This is a carbohydrate that is stores in your liver and muscles. It's used for energy on an as-needed basis. This discovery gave rise to the hour-long aerobics class. (Ever wondered why every gym class you've ever been to lasts for an hour? Me too.) If doing a relatively low intensity activity, it typically takes that long before your body has to turn to its own stores of energy for fuel, which is when you begin to burn fat.
When your store of glycogen is reduced, the carbs from the next meal you eat will get converted into glycogen to replenish the body's store. This is good news because they won't be converted to body fat when left unused for energy.
The added bonus here is that your body's furnace has now been turned up a few degrees. Your metabolism increases and this means that your body will continue to burn body fat hours after you have finished working out.
As you can imagine, the longer you workout, the more of the energy stores will be used. Of course there's a point of going too far and putting yourself at a risk of injury. An hour of a sustained intensity exercise is typically sufficient.
But what would happen if instead of maintaining that same intensity level, you increased it several fold? It's easy to understand that if you run as opposed to walk, the higher intensity running will force your body to turn to its own energy stores sooner, tapping into the glycogen resources. You would theoretically be able to lose more weight and burn more calories in a shorter amount of time. But it may be too much to ask to do nothing but sprint for half an hour.
The way to approach this would be to do interval training. There's a very easy way to start interval training if you've never done it before. Walk briskly for 5 minutes, then break into a jog for another five minutes. Then walk briskly once again until you've caught your breath and then sprint for a minute before walking again for one more minute. From this point, alternate between a sprint and a walk, a minute each and do this for the next 15 minutes. That's the basic concept.
By incorporating the periods of higher intensity, you will be steadily losing unwanted entire body fat and weight healthily and naturally, and you can do it far faster than spending a whole hour in class. If you're used to only doing hour-long low intensity routines, you'll be amazed at the difference that adding it flashes of high intensity work will make. Give yourself a two week test and you'll see what I'm talking about.
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George McDonald has been an avid workout fan his entire life. His passion for achieving physical fitness began as a high school athlete and became more advanced with age and experience. He started IntervalTrainingRoutines.com as a way to share what he has learned and connect with others who share his passion for peak physical fitness.
Visit my website at: [http://www.intervaltrainingroutines.com].
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